Category Archives: Children and babies

Post navigation

The Summer Reading Challenge has arrived! The challenge for children aged 5-12 is to read six books over the school holidays. The theme is Animal Agents – who are investigating strange goings on in the library! Children collect stickers as they go and help crime busting creatures solve the clues to reveal the mystery!

On successfully completing the challenge, children receive a certificate and a gold medal!! There are also some excellent prizes on up for grabs this year including Dynamic Earth family passes, astronomy evenings at the Royal Observatory and Edinburgh Leisure passes, with more to be confirmed.

Pop into your local library and sign up to join in the fun. Borrow some animal agents themed books whilst you are there or any book you like. You can also find out what children’s activities will be taking place over the summer in your library whilst you are there. As well as borrowing books from the library you can even download some of our children’s ebooks and audiobooks to join in with the fun. Check out our Summer Reading Challenge collection on our OverDrive Kids site.

The Animal Agents adventure starts on the 23 June and runs until 27 August.

This year the Edinburgh Art Festival’s Explorersfamilies programme comes to Central Library for free weekly creative art making sessions suitable for ages 8-13. These sessions are inspired by the EAF artist commissions programme and the ‘Making of the Future’ theme. Join us weekly or drop in for a one-off session to creatively re-imagine your city.

“Tower” by Toby Patterson, Dunfermline 2014

Each session will look at a different artist and include 2D and 3D arts activities such as building a miniature bothy inspired by artist Bobby Niven, designing a modernist city after artist Toby Paterson and creating inflatable giant flower sculptures inspired by artist duo Walker and Bromwich.

All sessions will be held in the George Washington Room within the Central Library –

Thu 6 July 2-4pmExplorers at the Library: Walker and BromwichCreate your own inflatable sculptures and model dragons inspired by Walker and Bromwich’s Dragon of Profit and Private Ownership.

Thu 13 July 2-4pmExplorers at the Library: Bobby Niven
Design and build your own miniature bothys and dens inspired by Bobby Niven’s Palmhouse.

Thu 20 July 2-4pmExplorers at the Library: Shannan Te Ao
Make musical instruments and write your own musical score inspired by Shannan Te Ao’s use of Maori songs and proverbs.

Thu 3 August 2-4pmExplorers at the Library: Toby Paterson
Make your own 3D collage of a fantasy building, drawing on Paterson’s modernist architectural influences.

Thu 10 August 2-4pmExplorers at the Library: The Making of the Future
Design and build a miniature installation in the library, of a future Edinburgh city centre inspired by the “grandfather of town planning”, Patrick Geddes.

In celebration of the children’s work the outcomes of each workshop will be exhibited in the Children’s Library for the last week of the festival, 21-27 August.

The staircase exhibition in Central Library for April is Idyllic Garden in Mind: Childhood Dreamland which uses illustrations from Kate Greenaway’s children’s books. The exhibition was createdby Lin Fan, an Art History master’s degree student at the University of Edinburgh.

Fan has selected some beautiful Kate Greenaway books as well as some lovely winners of the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library’s collections. Last month, she also held a Garden Book Family Craft Workshop inspired by Kate Greenway’s illustrations and some of the books created by the children will be on display too.

Browse the ‘childhood dreamland’ in the Central Library staircase and foyer display areas from 3 – 28 April 2017.

Central Library’s Dyslexia Chatterbooks Group meets on the last Tuesday of each month in the Central Children’s Library. The following is an extract from a story created by the group at a recent meeting. The children started by putting their ideas together on a storyboard with the help of Library Advisor, Beth Cochrane. The original idea for the story started with a missing toy Penguin, who mysteriously turned up in the library one day…

When he entered Page Flipper found himself surrounded by lots and lots of books, so he decided to pick one up and read it. It was called ‘The Giant Penguin Book.’ But as he started to read, he started to grow! Once he had finished the book, he realised he was now a giant penguin!

After searching for more fun and interesting books, Page Flipper found himself a little bit lost. He shouted for help, and along came a friendly librarian. With a big smile on her face she said: “Hello! My name’s Sophie, would you like to come to our Chatterbooks?” Page Flipper was happy to be invited so along he went, and made lots of new friends at Chatterbooks. So many new friends, in fact, that he decided he would live in the Library forever!

Edinburgh Libraries have a tradition of receiving donations of images from the public. It is a fantastic way of sharing a piece of the city’s history with a wider audience than just your family. One such donation was a photograph album of over 100 images belonging to the wonderfully named Miss Mary Morag Bird Cunningham. This was gifted to us after her death in 1978 and has recently been digitised to make the fantastic images available online. The album is a fascinating pictorial account of Mary’s career as a nurse and pioneer health visitor in Edinburgh from 1911 to the late 1930s.

Nurses from Ward 14, RIE (1911)

Mary began her four years of training at the Royal Infirmary in 1911 before moving to the Royal Edinburgh Maternity Hospital to become a midwife. The album has a wonderful collection of frequently informal photos of the staff and buildings of these hospitals.

In July 1917 however Edinburgh introduced an extensive Child Welfare Scheme and created the post of health visitor to implement the care of the city’s children. Mary was one of the ten women chosen to become an Edinburgh pioneering health visitor. In her album we follow her from her first day on the job through 20 years of running child health clinics throughout the city.

Bookbug’s Library Challenge is a fun way to encourage young children to explore and enjoy their local library.

Bookbug Library Challenge at Oxgangs Library

As a result of the feedback from consultation, a few changes are being introduced to the materials we use to support the program. What better excuse for some Bookbug fun? Children from 2 local nursery classes came to Oxgangs Library to celebrate the changes.

We were delighted to have author/illustrator Alison Murray, who shared stories, songs and activities with us and each of the children also got a gift of a mini bookbug!

Children, who must be p4 to p7, can write a poem or story, which could focus on anything from a memorable visit to a Scottish garden like the Royal Botanic Gardens or a creative depiction of what the ideal Scottish garden would look and smell like.

Culture Convener, Councillor Richard Lewis, said: “This is a popular and engaging competition for budding writers across the city, and always produces many creative and compelling entries from young people.

This year’s theme should also inspire more visits to our fantastic range of parks and green spaces so I look forward to reading the creative writing to result from it.”